Funeral for a Lark
by Deep Forest Green
Summary: A missing scene piece. In the convent, twelve-year-old Cosette finds a dead lark outside her bedroom window, and she and Valjean bury it. Meanwhile, Valjean reflects that neither he nor Cosette were able to attend Fantine's funeral. Oneshot, sad drabble.


"Papa, look!"

"What is it, Cosette?"

The old man panicked to hear his daughter so distressed. Even now, four years after moving into the convent, he still worried about the police finding him and taking him back to prison. He rushed into her small room to see what was the matter.

"There's a dead bird outside the window."

"Oh," said Valjean, relieved. So it was only a bird. He relaxed a little and started out of the room.

"Well, are we just going to leave it there to rot?"

"No, of course not," he replied. She was becoming spoiled, he admitted. But he liked that. It meant he was doing something right.

"It's an ill omen," said Cosette sadly, pressing her hands against the glass. "It's a lark and so am I. This bird is a sign that I'm going to die soon."

"No," said Valjean vehemently. "It's just a bird. A poor, unfortunate bird. I'll go bury it outside."

"Are you going to bury it in the cemetery?"

Valjean almost laughed that a twelve-year-old girl would want to bury a bird in a cemetery for humans. It was almost as if she believed that animals had souls.

"No," he said. "I'll bury it behind some bushes."

"Don't do that," said Cosette. "I want to be able to visit its grave."

What right had he to be unhappy? When a child could say such a thing? Her mother would be so proud- of him, that he had been able to maintain her innocence for so long.

"All right, Cosette," he said. "I'll put it in the garden so you can go to visit its grave."

"We should say a prayer for it," she said before he left. "Mother Abbess told me that there is a prayer for everything."

"So what is the prayer for a bird?"

"I don't know. I thought you would teach it to me."

Valjean smiled with the smile that Cosette absolutely adored. No one else could smile like him. He took her outside and knelt down with her in the garden. There, he picked up a shovel and clasped his hands together in prayer, taking her hand and bringing her beside him.

"Lord," he began slowly, "bless the... soul of Your creature, this lark, gone from us so soon, too soon. It was a beautiful... fragile bird, cut down by the windowpane of this, Your sacred convent. May it rest in peace in Your kingdom... amen."

"Is that all?" Cosette asked him, opening her eyes and staring at her father.

"Yes," Valjean said, turning towards her. "Did you expect there to be more?"

"There should be more," Cosette told him. "Eulogies are supposed to be longer than that."

"All right," he said. "Why don't you make up the rest of it?"

Cosette shifted her knees and closed her eyes again. "Lord, please protect this bird... don't make me fall to the same fate... um, amen."

"That wasn't much longer," Valjean pointed out.

"Well, what do you want me to say? How do you write a eulogy for someone you didn't even know?"

"Just imagine that the bird is your mother."

"But the bird is me," Cosette insisted, gesturing to the corpse. "It's a lark. I'm a lark."

"Where do you think larks come from?"

Cosette took a deep breath. "Dear Lord," she began one more time, "I'm sorry that I never got to know this lark. It seems that it was sent to earth for no other reason than to die. I know we all die someday, but that bird could have been a mother. It could have had eggs in its nest and have died trying to find food for its babies. Maybe in its last moments, before it hit that window, it was thinking of them. I don't know if I'll ever get to experience that kind of love, but if a bird can, then so can any human being. I know that it's just a bird, and nobody cares about it or thinks it's important, but I do. And I hope You'll see it the same way. Um... amen."

Valjean ruffled Cosette's hair and reached for the shovel. Then he buried the lark between two rows of tulips, where it would soon become fertilizer for the flowers.


End file.
